Pocket FM Doubles ARR to $500M as AI Runs 99% of New Audio

TechCrunch reports that India's Pocket FM has doubled its annualized revenue run rate to $500 million over the past year while pushing AI production up to 93 percent of its overall catalog and 99 percent of new content.

Co-founder and CEO Rohan Nayak told the outlet the company still relies on humans for ideas and storytelling and uses AI to turn those concepts into finished content at scale. "We want to create great IPs that last 100 years, and that needs humans," he said. AI head Vasu Sharma, a former Meta and Tesla scientist, told TechCrunch the startup has trained its own models for creative writing and text-to-speech on years of production data and signals on how listeners engage with stories.

The cost curve is what unlocked the volume: Nayak said the technology has made content production about 80x cheaper.

Pocket FM now says it serves more than 250 million listeners across 20-plus countries, with the United States accounting for roughly 70 percent of the $500 million run rate and growing about 70 percent year over year. Advertising brings in about $85 million annually and user payments the remaining $415 million; 96 titles have each generated more than $1 million and 13 have exceeded $10 million. A three-month-old sister app, Pocket Saga, has reached an approximately $15 million annualized run rate on a catalog that is entirely AI-produced with no human creators involved.

Nayak said Pocket Entertainment is in talks for a round of $100 million to $120 million at roughly a $2 billion valuation and ruled out a public listing within 24 months, though he told TechCrunch the company has "no immediate pressure to raise capital."

The disclosures land the same day Moonshot AI told investors its ARR topped $1 billion in August, another AI-native business publishing hockey-stick revenue lines through founder interviews rather than audited filings.